figured he had to be dirty. I let off two rounds at the waterline. Then those two dudes at the bar showed up and said I was trespassing.”
“When’s the last time you slept?”
“I think sleep is highly overrated.”
“You never saw those guys at the bar?”
He blew out his breath. “I melted my head. I identified Courtney’s body from a photograph. The facial shot was taken close up. The plastic bag was only part of it. I’m going to cool those guys out, Dave. Don’t try to stop me. It’s a done deal.”
He picked up his jigger of tequila and drank it half empty, his eyes never leaving mine.
THAT EVENING I put Clete to bed in his cottage at the motor court, and in the morning I brought him a boxed breakfast from Victor’s.
“Is there any chance you hit the guy you shot at?” I asked.
“I didn’t see any feathers fly, if that’s what you mean.”
“What’d the guy look like?”
“He looked guilty.”
He got into the shower, the water drumming on the tin walls. I couldn’t take any more of his booze-soaked craziness.
I went to the office and told Helen what had happened, her face clouding as she listened, her hand opening and closing on a wadded-up piece of paper. “You give this to the FBI,” she said.
“I don’t think that’s the way to go.”
“You do it and you do it now, Dave. Now, get out of here.” I couldn’t blame her.
OTIS BAYLOR got out of jail on bond and was promptly fired by his insurance company. On the same day he was fired, he became a self-appointed peripatetic counselor to anyone filing a storm-damage claim against his former employer or, for that matter, against any insurance company. He held meetings with home owners in a coffee shop and taught them how to phrase the language in their claims and how to file suit when their claims were unfairly denied. Trees were blown down by wind, not floated against a house by a tidal surge. Structural collapse was caused by twisters, not by flooding. Mold was caused by driving rain after wind had blown out the windows. Lightning exploded the electrical system and curled the walls and split the foundation, not water.
The words “water,” “flood,” “tidal,” and “surge” did not exist.
On Wednesday I saw him on the street, down by Clete’s office, his manner strangely composed for a man whose life was hanging in shreds. His shirt pocket was full of ballpoint pens, his upper torso broad and solid inside his clothes. “You find what you were looking for at my house?” he asked.
We were in the shade of a live oak that grew out of the sidewalk, and the wind was blowing leaves along the concrete. “No, we didn’t, but other people may give it a try,” I said.
“They can have at it,” he said.
“Courtney Degravelle probably had the same kind of casual attitude.”
“The lady down the street?”
“You don’t know?”
“Know what?”
“She was murdered. So was Andre Rochon. They were both abducted, tortured, and murdered.”
He was absolutely still, his tie fluttering slightly against the pin that held it to his shirt.
“Who did it?”
“Maybe Sidney Kovick’s people. Maybe some international guys. Whoever they are, they’re well organized.”
He looked ashen. “I knew Ms. Degravelle. She was a nice lady. She was tortured to death?”
“She died of a coronary. But, yes, she was tortured terribly.”
“My family is at risk, isn’t it?”
“I can’t say that for sure.”
“I’ve seen this man Bledsoe, the private investigator, around town. He’s involved in this, isn’t he?”
“You’ve seen him in the last few days?”
“I saw him on the street before I was arrested. You think he’s involved in Ms. Degravelle’s death?”
“We’re not sure.”
“This never ends, does it?”
“I’m going to say something of a personal nature to you, Mr. Baylor. You’re a believer. As such, you know it’s us against them. The contest is never over, the field never quite ours.”
I guess my statement was grandiloquent, perhaps foolish. He looked at me with an expression that was as flat as a painting on a signboard. Then he walked away without saying good-bye, crossing the street through traffic that had to swerve around him.
But unbeknown to Otis, he had just done something that convinced me he was not a killer. He had shown no interest in the death of Andre Rochon, a man who had probably raped his daughter. Those who seek vengeance will accept the state’s invitation to witness the execution of their tormentors, in the old days by electrocution, today by lethal injection, but they get no rest and to the end of their days are haunted by the specter of an enemy who is ironically now safe and beyond their grasp.
For good or bad, Otis Baylor was not one of these.
IN A NUMBER of well-written movie scripts, a forensic psychologist undoes the maniacal workings of a serial killer by somehow placing himself inside the killer’s head. As a consequence, the forensic psychologist goes a bit mad himself.
This makes for great entertainment. But I don’t think it has anything to do with reality. What goes on in the mind of a sociopath? No one knows. Without exception, they take their secrets to the grave and lie about their deeds and the whereabouts of their victims, even when they have nothing to gain. The only group I know to be as secretive are conjurors or, in South Louisiana, what we call “traiteurs.” They claim to be healers who receive their power from the forces of good. If you press them on the question, they’ll add that a traiteur can pass on his power at the hour of his death to a member of the opposite sex and only to a member of the opposite sex. Press them further and you will probably get a lesson in buried hostility. Why are they defensive? They never say. And that is what’s most disturbing about them.
On Thursday morning Alafair walked to her volunteer job at the evacuee shelter in City Park and Molly drove to her job at the Catholic self-help foundation on the bayou, and because the day was such a fine one, I walked the few blocks from my house to the sheriff’s department. At noon I checked out a cruiser and drove it home for lunch. As I pulled into the driveway behind Molly’s car, I saw Molly come around the back side of the house. She had just gotten home.
“Dave, come look at this,” she said.
I got out of the cruiser and followed her into the backyard. “What’s up?”
She pointed at the screen door. We usually latched it when we were gone to prevent Snuggs or Tripod from pawing it open and entering the house through the pet flap in the hard door. The screen had been cut and the latch unhooked from the eyelet screwed into the jamb. The lock on the hard door had been pried loose with a flat-bladed screwdriver.
“Have you been inside?” I asked.
She shook her head.
“Wait here,” I said, and unsnapped the leather strap on my.45.
I went through the kitchen into the living room and main bedroom, the.45 still holstered, my palm resting on the butt. Then I looked into the bathroom and walked down the hall and into Alafair’s room.
Her manuscript had been torn into long strips and scattered on the floor and on her bedspread. The screen on the monitor had been broken in the center with what I suspected was a ball-peen hammer. The keyboard hung in two pieces by its connection wire on the back of her chair. The metal housing on the computer had been punched with holes, peeled back from the frame, and the innards torn out and stomped into the wood floor. Her laser printer, which she had bought in Portland with money she had made working in the college bookstore, had been
